Speaker 1: This is the Anxiety Bites podcast, and I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jen Kirkman. I'm talking to Professor George Bonano today and
Speaker 1: he's in New York City, and I am also in
Speaker 1: New York City. I'm in Brooklyn, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of New York talk in this episode. And I just
Speaker 1: find it ironic that I just sat down to record
Speaker 1: this morning and there happens to be construction going on
Speaker 1: in my hallway of my apartment. Not just outside, but
Speaker 1: there's somebody outside my door right now and I can
Speaker 1: hear them. They're doing something to the little plaque outside
Speaker 1: my door. Um that has the you know, the number
Speaker 1: of my apartment. There's not a there's not a plaque
Speaker 1: outside my door honoring me if you thought that's where
Speaker 1: I was going. But I can hear them scraping. And
Speaker 1: then there's someone a little further away doing something with
Speaker 1: a drill that sounds like it's about to come through
Speaker 1: my wall. I don't know if y'all can hear it,
Speaker 1: but I have my little mini kitchen soundproofing system going on,
Speaker 1: So if you don't hear what I'm talking about, a
Speaker 1: the soundproofing works and be all of that was for
Speaker 1: no reason. But if you hear some sounds, that's the
Speaker 1: sound of New York and new things being built. So
Speaker 1: I found this this UM conversation with Professor Banana really
Speaker 1: really interesting because I personally just throw the word trauma
Speaker 1: around as though it's nothing, as though, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just colloquially just started using it like everyone's got trauma.
Speaker 1: And I think we all kind of do that. And
Speaker 1: I think on one level, it's great when we normalize
Speaker 1: something that we used to think, oh, that's really bad.
Speaker 1: You know, the word case scenario is someone thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: those people are crazy. Some all for normalizing, but I
Speaker 1: also want to get things right and not call something
Speaker 1: something that it isn't. But I think when we adapt
Speaker 1: or adopt expressions kind of on our own, it can
Speaker 1: be hard to let go of them when somebody who's
Speaker 1: actually an expert in this field says, no, that's not
Speaker 1: quite what's going on here. And so I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: anyone listening will feel the same kind of resistance that
Speaker 1: I don't think I felt necessarily talking to to Professor Branano.
Speaker 1: I definitely didn't feel resistance. But II sometimes we'll get
Speaker 1: feedback on this podcast and I think we all listen
Speaker 1: to things very personally from our own lens, and so
Speaker 1: sometimes else get feedback from people that say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know you said in this episode that cognitive behavior
Speaker 1: therapy works better for anxiety. But for me, I found
Speaker 1: that going back into my childhood work better. And it's like,
Speaker 1: I never say better or worse, but we might just
Speaker 1: look at different perspectives. And so anyway, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: just defining this episode is this kind of heady, intellectual
Speaker 1: discussion about research as opposed to someone who is diagnosing
Speaker 1: your particular experience with trauma. But I found this very
Speaker 1: interesting and and inspiring. But I do think that sometimes
Speaker 1: when things are inspiring, when we find out that we
Speaker 1: can handle more than we think, I think that sets
Speaker 1: us off into well, I mean, don't make me handle
Speaker 1: more than I think I can handle, or don't don't
Speaker 1: tell me that this isn't some very special diagnosed thing
Speaker 1: that I that I have. I don't. I don't want
Speaker 1: to hear that it's normal, because this is overwhelming. And
Speaker 1: so what Professor Banano and I talked about in this
Speaker 1: episode is that it's sort of being tossed around that
Speaker 1: America is in a mental health crisis post COVID, and
Speaker 1: I think the very nuanced way that he's talking about
Speaker 1: it is that we are in an extraordinary amount of stress,
Speaker 1: which is actually not good for the body, and we
Speaker 1: are not built for it. Like the human evolution is
Speaker 1: built for acute stress, which means sudden onset, short burst
Speaker 1: kind of, but not mild to moderate ongoing stress, which
Speaker 1: is what being in a global pandemic despite vaccines and
Speaker 1: masks is, Like, you know, we're still going through it.
Speaker 1: Two years later. We still could catch something, We still
Speaker 1: could give something to someone, We still could have family
Speaker 1: members that are sick. You know, it could still affect
Speaker 1: our jobs. And it's just this sort of low level,
Speaker 1: mild to moderate stress that we live with every day.
Speaker 1: And again, the body is not designed for that. So
Speaker 1: I think in this episode, you know, and I hope
Speaker 1: I don't sound insulting, like, um, I hope you guys
Speaker 1: get what we're going for here, But I just want
Speaker 1: to be very clear that I think in this episode,
Speaker 1: what what Professor Barano was saying and what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is really that that's no picnic either. It's just
Speaker 1: not the literal definition of trauma because trauma is something else,
Speaker 1: And so that that led me to what's so interesting
Speaker 1: about Professor Banano's new book, which is called the End
Speaker 1: of Trauma, How the new science of resilience is changing
Speaker 1: how we think about PTSD. And PTSD is something I
Speaker 1: throw around a lot. Oh, we've all got PTSD from
Speaker 1: you know, the last couple of years or whatever. And
Speaker 1: you know, PTSD is a diagnosis, it's an actual thing,
Speaker 1: and for those of you who have it, you're going, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone's walking around saying they've got it, and it's like
Speaker 1: it's sort of a just a little phrase we throw around,
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know, I'm hungry. It's like
Speaker 1: I've got PTSD, and it's a great quick way to
Speaker 1: commune nicate that you're feeling sort of tossed around. But again,
Speaker 1: it's really just what the mild and moderate stress is
Speaker 1: doing to your body, because that can actually create physical
Speaker 1: problems and it du equilibriates us. And so in a
Speaker 1: weird way, I just didn't want anyone to think people
Speaker 1: with actual experience experiencing a traumatic event or having PTSD
Speaker 1: were being in any way disrespective, because I think what
Speaker 1: Professor Banano's book is trying to do is quite the
Speaker 1: opposite is to shine a light more on what PTSD
Speaker 1: actually is, and shina light more on what it isn't
Speaker 1: so that we can learn how to cope. So I
Speaker 1: thought this was a very fascinating chat. So I'll just
Speaker 1: tell you a little bit more about his new book,
Speaker 1: The End of Trauma. And actually another one of my
Speaker 1: guests who you haven't heard the episode yet, she is
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist and Boston. She recommended that I read this
Speaker 1: book and that I have Dr Bnano on the air,
Speaker 1: and so, uh, this is the description from Amazon. In
Speaker 1: the End of Trauma, Pioneering psychologist George A. Banano argues
Speaker 1: that we failed to predict the psychological response to nine
Speaker 1: eleven because most of what we understand about trauma is wrong.
Speaker 1: For starters, it's not nearly as common as we think.
Speaker 1: In fact, people are overwhelmingly resilient to adversity. What we
Speaker 1: often interpret as PTSD are signs of a natural process
Speaker 1: of learning how to deal with a specific situation. We
Speaker 1: can cope far more effectively if we understand how this
Speaker 1: process works. Drawing on four decades of research, Banano explains
Speaker 1: what makes us resilient, why we sometimes aren't, and how
Speaker 1: we can better handle traumatic stress. So I thought this
Speaker 1: was particularly interesting as well because recently this past year,
Speaker 1: I started thinking about my nine eleven quote trauma um.
Speaker 1: I was in New York and eleven. I was not
Speaker 1: in the building. I was a mile away. I was
Speaker 1: really not directly affected by it, and I was wondering recently,
Speaker 1: do I have trauma from nine eleven? Now? I don't
Speaker 1: in the sense I'm not I get on airplanes. I
Speaker 1: still don't like tall buildings, never have. But I believe
Speaker 1: that's unrelated because when I have fear of being in
Speaker 1: an elevator going into a tall building, I'm not thinking
Speaker 1: a plane is going to crash into it, but I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just uncomfortable. I don't like being in a tall building, right, So,
Speaker 1: but I remember on A eleven I just sort of
Speaker 1: went into It didn't feel like it. It didn't feel
Speaker 1: like shock. I've been in shock before, getting crazy bad news,
Speaker 1: hearing about the death of someone unexpected, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: that kind of feeling. It was more of a numb
Speaker 1: and I didn't have any panic or anxiety that day.
Speaker 1: I certainly had concerns grief, a million emotions, but I
Speaker 1: specifically was not having panic attacks or feelings of generalized
Speaker 1: anxiety that day, which was odd because I had them
Speaker 1: every day, uh quote, for no reason, as as that
Speaker 1: tends to go. And on nine eleven, I didn't need
Speaker 1: to take my reserve klonopin, I didn't need to do
Speaker 1: breathing exercises, and I sort of self diagnosed, Oh well,
Speaker 1: maybe I was in shock, and maybe I never came
Speaker 1: out of the shock, and I wonder if I'm traumatized.
Speaker 1: And reading his book, I realized, Oh no, I just
Speaker 1: went into a sort of resiliency that that we go
Speaker 1: into now. Again, that might be different than someone who
Speaker 1: is actually in the towers and ran out and escaped.
Speaker 1: Of course I don't expect that. Um, we had the
Speaker 1: same physical body response that day. But oh, did you
Speaker 1: just hear my email? Ding? I hate that when I
Speaker 1: forget to turn off my email when I'm recording it
Speaker 1: sounds so unprofessed, you guys, but I'm not editing it out.
Speaker 1: So there's a little nine eleven talking here, And uh again,
Speaker 1: that's sort of how he began this book, is doing
Speaker 1: research into why nobody was getting mental health help around
Speaker 1: that time, even though it was being offered freely, and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really interesting discussion. I think that
Speaker 1: you will find, as I did reading the book, that
Speaker 1: every once in a while, my internal prejudice of what
Speaker 1: I think trauma is what I think PTSD is pops
Speaker 1: up and it's like, I'm not a forty year professor
Speaker 1: and psychologist, so I'm going to defer to the experts.
Speaker 1: So let's defer to the expert right now. My guest
Speaker 1: today is George Banano, PhD. He heads up the Lost
Speaker 1: Trauma and Emotion Lab, which is housed in the Department
Speaker 1: of Counseling and Clinical Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University in
Speaker 1: New York City. The lab is devoted to the question
Speaker 1: of how humans cope with loss, potential, trauma, and other
Speaker 1: forms of extreme life events. For the past twenty five years,
Speaker 1: their research has attempted to document the variety of outcomes
Speaker 1: that people show in response to such events, as well
Speaker 1: as the factors that predict these outcomes. They've been especially
Speaker 1: interested in advancing search and theory about resilience in the
Speaker 1: face of extreme adversity and the salutary role played by personality, emotion,
Speaker 1: and coping, and in particular emotional regulation, flexibility in moderating
Speaker 1: how aversive events impact our lives. Professor Banano has a
Speaker 1: new book that came out UM a few months ago.
Speaker 1: In it is called The End of Trauma. How the
Speaker 1: new science of resilience is changing how we think about PTSD.
Speaker 1: Let's talk to Professor Bonano. Now. This interview will, I think,
Speaker 1: challenge a lot of people, because I believe that, you know,
Speaker 1: we all come to reading a book or hearing an
Speaker 1: interview with our own experiences or prejudices or triggers. It
Speaker 1: must be very confronting to hear someone say, you know,
Speaker 1: trauma isn't as common as we think it is. PTSD
Speaker 1: is not as common as we think it is. We're
Speaker 1: a lot more resilient. And I want to talk later
Speaker 1: about that word, and you know, we'll get into the
Speaker 1: nitty gritty of the book, but in general, can you
Speaker 1: explain to me what made you want to do this
Speaker 1: research or you know, how how did you fall into this? Well,
Speaker 1: those are all great questions, Jed. The reason I wanted
Speaker 1: to do this research was an accident. UM. I had
Speaker 1: been studying experimental research. I was a clinical psychologist doing
Speaker 1: experimental work, and I decided I needed to switch gears
Speaker 1: a little bit, switch directions a little bit, because I
Speaker 1: had been really almost lost in the details of the experiment,
Speaker 1: which is is quite fun if you have a mind
Speaker 1: for it, but I was getting removed from the nature
Speaker 1: of what the work I really wanted to do, which
Speaker 1: had to do with trying to understand people's experience in
Speaker 1: in aversive situations. And I was offered a position in
Speaker 1: San Francisco when I got my PhD um study doing bereavement,
Speaker 1: heading a bereavement project. And I didn't know anything about
Speaker 1: bereavement at the time, which turned out to be to
Speaker 1: my great advantage because the literature and bereavement is really
Speaker 1: out of date, or it was really out of date
Speaker 1: at the time. This is sorry, I just dated myself
Speaker 1: right there. But in one and UM, when I first
Speaker 1: began to look at the literature, I really kind of
Speaker 1: couldn't I was shocked. I kind of couldn't believe it
Speaker 1: because I thought, well, this is really at odds with
Speaker 1: everything we know now in psychology, and and this doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. At the time, the literature sort of
Speaker 1: was that that grief is this this really difficult thing
Speaker 1: for everybody, which it is it's a very difficult thing
Speaker 1: for almost everybody, but it lasts a long time and
Speaker 1: you have to engage. It worked really hard and to
Speaker 1: do many months, even a year or sor two of
Speaker 1: suffering if you want to come out on the other
Speaker 1: side of it. And that didn't make any sense to
Speaker 1: me from an evolutionary perspective, from the perspective I knew
Speaker 1: in psychology. Sorry, it didn't make any sense to you
Speaker 1: that grieving kind of takes a long time. You're saying
Speaker 1: from an evolutionary standpoint, you're understanding when you read this
Speaker 1: relic that not really were more resilient than that. Is
Speaker 1: that what you mean? Well, basically, um, I suppose I
Speaker 1: didn't at the time, I hadn't used the word resilience,
Speaker 1: that the concept hadn't been applied really in these in
Speaker 1: these settings before. But I didn't quite explain this clear enough.
Speaker 1: I think, Um, the idea at the time was that
Speaker 1: people were kind of debilitated by the loss for a
Speaker 1: period of time, and that most people needed the help
Speaker 1: of therapists in order to get through it. That didn't
Speaker 1: make any sense because you know, up until recently, we
Speaker 1: were nomadic, we were hunter gatherers, We didn't have the
Speaker 1: luxury of that, so I was curious about this. Maybe
Speaker 1: I was wrong, but you know, it didn't make sense
Speaker 1: to me. So I had the luxury at the time
Speaker 1: of coming into a project that had a good deal
Speaker 1: of financial resources, and we set out to test this idea,
Speaker 1: to do the kind of studies that I was also
Speaker 1: surprised nobody was doing. We got large groups of people
Speaker 1: and followed them over time, and really most of the
Speaker 1: work at that time was primarily done with a focus
Speaker 1: on people who were suffering. People were coming into therapy,
Speaker 1: people who in a sense had extreme levels of grief,
Speaker 1: and I set out to just kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: anybody who lost a love and within recently, within a
Speaker 1: recent period of time we wanted into study. And when
Speaker 1: we did that right away, we saw that most people
Speaker 1: were highly resilient. Most people they had pain when we
Speaker 1: asked them to talk about you know, we invited them
Speaker 1: up to the university, and you know, it's a kind
Speaker 1: of an intense thing if you've been through a loss
Speaker 1: and researchers invite you up to interview them. There's a
Speaker 1: kind of a you know, way did feel to it.
Speaker 1: So people got very upset when we talked to them,
Speaker 1: but you could also see that they were functioning just fine.
Speaker 1: And so we began to report this and to you know,
Speaker 1: to the research findings, and then you know, of course,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of pushback from the bribing community.
Speaker 1: We went, oh, we bent over backwards to try to
Speaker 1: verify these reselves. We had friends makes ratings of them,
Speaker 1: we had independent therapists interview them to you know, give
Speaker 1: us their judgment, and basically all of this corroborative. Daddy
Speaker 1: that that the majority of people were basically living their
Speaker 1: lives still. They were by the basic criteria you would imagine.
Speaker 1: They're they're able to concentrate, to to do work and
Speaker 1: to do things that they needed to, and they were
Speaker 1: able to have loving feelings and interactions with other people.
Speaker 1: They were Those are the two basic things that go
Speaker 1: way back in terms of what we think of health.
Speaker 1: So we did that a number of times, we replicated
Speaker 1: a number of times, and then faith intervened again. I
Speaker 1: came to New York, and not long after I came
Speaker 1: to New York, not eleven happen, And so we began
Speaker 1: to study it on eleven in the same way, and
Speaker 1: we've just continued down that path. When I say we,
Speaker 1: I mean my research team. We've continued on that path, UM,
Speaker 1: and we've been finding over and over and over that
Speaker 1: the majority of people are resilient after the most high
Speaker 1: leverse events you can think of, um, not everybody. And
Speaker 1: that's a crucial thing you asked about trauma initially. I
Speaker 1: don't ever say trauma PTSD don't exist, right that we
Speaker 1: always identify it the pattern we whether it's PTSD or
Speaker 1: just what we call a chronically elevated symptoms. You know,
Speaker 1: we model these trajectories. We always see that. But it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's not fifty and that's sixty. Is it
Speaker 1: was commonly believed or most people. It's a relatively small percentage,
Speaker 1: usually around five to sometimes higher UM. But it's not
Speaker 1: you know, at the time, it was believed that the
Speaker 1: majority of people would have PTSD after high levels events,
Speaker 1: or at least you know, a large number, and it's
Speaker 1: it's typically not. Well, let me take it back to
Speaker 1: what you originally said, and I'm just going to go
Speaker 1: into the mind of one listening because again I I
Speaker 1: for me with this podcast, I was trying to get
Speaker 1: into the mind of the listener, in the mind of
Speaker 1: someone with anxiety. Who I think in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways it can be almost an attack on our identity
Speaker 1: when we're told certain things if we're not listening carefully.
Speaker 1: So I just want to reiterate the most important thing
Speaker 1: you said is the word debilitated. Right, So you're talking
Speaker 1: about you're reading these studies and you know when people
Speaker 1: are going through bereavement, they need all of this support
Speaker 1: and they need therapy and blah blah blah, and you're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, how could that be true. You know,
Speaker 1: we were nomadic and then that now I can hear
Speaker 1: someone saying, well, things are getting better, and you know
Speaker 1: we don't have to live like blah blah blah. We
Speaker 1: have therapists and let's all, you know, be open to
Speaker 1: it and stop you know, being such a boomer and
Speaker 1: saying that you know, we're too sensitive and you're not
Speaker 1: saying that, You're saying it doesn't make sense because you're
Speaker 1: you're not noticing people are debilitated, which is a very
Speaker 1: specific thing, which means you wouldn't be able to work,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have feelings of love, you wouldn't and of
Speaker 1: course we all go through bereavement and we do have
Speaker 1: days or whatever where we can't work. But you were
Speaker 1: saying it is not destroying people to the point where
Speaker 1: humanity can't continue. There needs to be a little more
Speaker 1: nuanced in this. Uh, look at what suffering isn't isn't
Speaker 1: is that kind? No, that's absolutely right. And some people
Speaker 1: are debilitated. And then what we've identified in all of
Speaker 1: this work, some people are debilitated. Some people struggle very
Speaker 1: hard for a while and they are sort of almost
Speaker 1: debilitated or you know, barely functioning, and then they get better.
Speaker 1: We have identity that pattern. And then sometimes people are
Speaker 1: doing not so well but barely getting by, but they're
Speaker 1: still functioning, and then they get a little worse. We've
Speaker 1: seen all these patterns and then again the resilience pattern,
Speaker 1: we called it the resilience trajectory. That's always the majority.
Speaker 1: And we've looked at this on average across all the studies.
Speaker 1: At this point, our team or other people's teams have
Speaker 1: done sixty seven studies like this using big samples and
Speaker 1: following people over time, little samples, whatever we have, And
Speaker 1: in those sixties seven studies, the average prevalence of this
Speaker 1: resilience trajectory was about two thirds, so two thirds is
Speaker 1: a lot. It's the majority, but it still means one
Speaker 1: third may be struggling either a short term or long term,
Speaker 1: with with some problems not necessarily debilitating, and some for
Speaker 1: some debilitating, but also many people who are struggling but
Speaker 1: still functioning and still getting out with their life. And
Speaker 1: you know, I always want to make sure I point
Speaker 1: that out, or at least I'm glad that you're thankful
Speaker 1: to you for clarifying it that, um, those are the
Speaker 1: patterns we see. Well, that's great, and I want to
Speaker 1: talk about because I was there as well and in
Speaker 1: New York, and I have actually ironic that I read
Speaker 1: your book because recently I've been claiming I have trauma
Speaker 1: from it and I don't think I do UM in
Speaker 1: that sense. So I want to get your analysis of this.
Speaker 1: But you know, on this podcast, which is about anxiety,
Speaker 1: I'm very big into saying, you know, everybody has anxiety.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, it's the default human condition. It's obviously
Speaker 1: just a spectrum. But I feel like lately we've been
Speaker 1: throwing around the words trauma and PTSD in the same way,
Speaker 1: and you know, from reading your book it's just not true.
Speaker 1: And I did recently read somewhere else that PTSD is
Speaker 1: now not considered an anxiety disorder right, it's it's been
Speaker 1: moved into its own category. Well, that whether there is
Speaker 1: an anxiety because or or not is I think almost
Speaker 1: the pointless discussion, because I don't know if I've said
Speaker 1: it much in the book. I think I did actually,
Speaker 1: But the the whole d s M the diagnostic Manual,
Speaker 1: I think is I don't put much stock in it
Speaker 1: because it's not scientific. It's basically done by committee, and
Speaker 1: the committees are are fight with each other. It's not
Speaker 1: a pretty sight. I tell you, I've seen some of it.
Speaker 1: It's not a pretty sight. Oh, I'd love to watch
Speaker 1: the documentary about that. I see that information. I didn't know.
Speaker 1: That sounds kind of well, there have been there's many
Speaker 1: books have been written about with you know, with good correspondence.
Speaker 1: And the original people who did the d s M three,
Speaker 1: the d s M three was the one that really
Speaker 1: took hold in this country. The third version and the
Speaker 1: people who created that one um the sort of the
Speaker 1: leading people are now very critical of the more recent
Speaker 1: incarnations of the d s M UM And basically it's
Speaker 1: apart from the fighting and you know all those things.
Speaker 1: It's basically not a scientific document, and it's basically um,
Speaker 1: it's susceptible to social forces, to political forces, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's it has the illusion of being a scientific document,
Speaker 1: which I think is dangerous because it is not. And
Speaker 1: the prevalence of the idea of trauma and PTSD and
Speaker 1: the literally in the in the popular world makes me
Speaker 1: very uneasy because I think it's dangerous. First of all,
Speaker 1: it belittles the experience of those people who generally have PTSD,
Speaker 1: who generally suffered trauma. But if I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the confusion comes from the failure to I mean
Speaker 1: that it's partly the diagnosis, the fault of the diagnosis,
Speaker 1: because it's it's such a complicated diagnosis. The part of
Speaker 1: the diagnosis is you need to have had a traumatic event,
Speaker 1: and then the other part of the diagnosis is that
Speaker 1: you have the symptoms of PTSD. But the the idea
Speaker 1: of a traumatic event, I think is part of the
Speaker 1: reason it's so confusing. And I don't even use the
Speaker 1: word trauma any more traumatic event. I use the word
Speaker 1: potentially traumatic event. And we can then agree in advance,
Speaker 1: and what a potentially traumatic event is you know, it's
Speaker 1: a certain class of event that's going to activate the
Speaker 1: you know, the the alarm system in our brain and
Speaker 1: body and really put the feeling of great danger, the
Speaker 1: feeling of of life threatening danger or physical harm, and
Speaker 1: those kind of events activate a bodily system, which is
Speaker 1: really just have a more extreme version of our regular
Speaker 1: stress system, and that bodily system results in a kind
Speaker 1: of an emergency response. It doesn't go away and something
Speaker 1: it usually takes minimum a couple hours. It involves cortisol
Speaker 1: and other you know, neural hormones that that are long
Speaker 1: lasting and for some people it doesn't going for it
Speaker 1: several days or longer. But that's the reaction to a
Speaker 1: potential trauma. It's not PTSD, and PTSD is is something
Speaker 1: that happens later and it's it's it's associated with certain
Speaker 1: core symptoms. And the core symptoms, whether people argue about
Speaker 1: them or not, in the diagnostic manners, they are kind
Speaker 1: of basic, the core symptoms and um that if we
Speaker 1: if we understand that, I think we go we may
Speaker 1: go a long way towards understanding whether something is really
Speaker 1: traumatic or not. So if people have the symptoms of PTSD,
Speaker 1: you know they're they're probably traumatized. And I'm talking about
Speaker 1: long term, right, if they have the symptoms of PTSD
Speaker 1: for at least a month or longer than they've been traumatized.
Speaker 1: But most people who experience potential traumas will have some
Speaker 1: trauma like symptoms for a relatively short period of time.
Speaker 1: And that's not PTSD. It's not even a trauma. It's
Speaker 1: I call the traumatic stress. Maybe that wasn't even the
Speaker 1: best choice of words, but it's a natural reaction to
Speaker 1: this highly aversive event. And I even friends of mine
Speaker 1: will say that they think they've they've been traumatized, you know,
Speaker 1: when something happens. And I don't get into it too
Speaker 1: much with my friends because the last thing everybody wants
Speaker 1: is a psychologist who will tell you what your experiences
Speaker 1: as a friend. But you know that they I see
Speaker 1: it even in highly educated people. And he said, all
Speaker 1: kinds of different people who will think you know, they don't.
Speaker 1: There's a myth in the culture that none of these
Speaker 1: are more natural, but they're quite natural. They have these reactions,
Speaker 1: and if you have these reactions, they almost always go away.
Speaker 1: If they don't go away, then you know, things get
Speaker 1: dicey and you know then you might need professional help
Speaker 1: about a month afterwards. But so many things in life
Speaker 1: are now talked about with their traumas. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like the misuse of the word awesome, which used to
Speaker 1: mean awesome. You know, you're talking about I saw a
Speaker 1: spaceship land in front of me, um, you know, And
Speaker 1: now it's like, oh, that shirt is awesome. And so
Speaker 1: now we call difficult feelings or stress or anxiety or
Speaker 1: depression or sadness whatever, Oh I'm in trauma over this
Speaker 1: or a PTSD. And when someone tells you, well, actually
Speaker 1: you don't, I think it's hard to hear because it
Speaker 1: must feel like your feelings are being invalidated and you're like,
Speaker 1: you're just using the wrong word. Anxiety. Bites will be
Speaker 1: right back. After a quick little message from one of
Speaker 1: our sponsors, I wanted to ask you, so, yeah, you
Speaker 1: did say in your book that, um, you know, we
Speaker 1: do have extreme reactions sometimes to a potentially traumatic event,
Speaker 1: but again, it could be traumatic stress. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it's set in stone at that moment. How vents
Speaker 1: Oh my god, now we're locked in. We're gonna have PTSD. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not in our bodies necessarily yeah, and people do
Speaker 1: have um. The interesting thing is that if you try
Speaker 1: to predict who will develop PTSD at one month, that
Speaker 1: the extremity of people's initial reactions won't do it, which
Speaker 1: is kind of curious, interesting because people vary in how
Speaker 1: they react to things. But also here's some really crucial point.
Speaker 1: Events very vary events are widely different, especially these potentially
Speaker 1: traumatic events. Some people can go through and a potentially
Speaker 1: traumatic event and they don't have much a reaction, or
Speaker 1: the event will be particularly difficult for them for all
Speaker 1: kinds of reasons. Or there are two people were in
Speaker 1: the same event like none eleven is a great example.
Speaker 1: There were many many people affected by nine eleven that
Speaker 1: they directly affected, people who were in the towers, people
Speaker 1: around the towers, people who saw the towers fall from
Speaker 1: a close distance, and what the experience they actually had
Speaker 1: very greatly, you know, what part of it that they see,
Speaker 1: where were they you know, how close were they coming
Speaker 1: to to to being injured, all of those things very greatly.
Speaker 1: So some people will react to those things with tremendous
Speaker 1: distress and some people won't. And in most cases, even
Speaker 1: those reactions debate. You know, we we interviewed in my research,
Speaker 1: people who are actually in the towers when that when
Speaker 1: the plane struck, and we saw a lot of those people.
Speaker 1: The majority again were resilient, and then some people were.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people traumatized, certainly from those events,
Speaker 1: but even within those events. So it's really hard to know.
Speaker 1: And and basically people there's a question of waiting, you know.
Speaker 1: And I mean, if people want to have therapy because
Speaker 1: they think that, you know, they're upset, i'd say, you know, well, fine,
Speaker 1: go ahead and do that. But the profession has, you know,
Speaker 1: had this habit almost of invading people's lives and trying
Speaker 1: to offer therapy to people when they wouldn't necessarily ask
Speaker 1: for it early on, and that's actually been shown to
Speaker 1: make people worse. Because you said, you know, it reminded
Speaker 1: me of on nine eleven when they thought, okay, let's
Speaker 1: get all the first responders there. There's going to be
Speaker 1: so many people that they're going to be injured and
Speaker 1: we need to get them. And there was no survivors,
Speaker 1: so that you know, this whole notion of get everyone
Speaker 1: to the hospital, there was no one to get And
Speaker 1: you said it was the same thing with mental health experts.
Speaker 1: You know, let's get these teams of people to help
Speaker 1: the trauma survivors, and people were not. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: people were plastering signs everywhere and people were not seeking help.
Speaker 1: And you said, um, there are many different reasons, but
Speaker 1: it really wasn't a case of oh there's a stigma
Speaker 1: or I don't even think I needed it. It was
Speaker 1: it was something else. It was just it wasn't I
Speaker 1: don't know what. Why do you think, Well, well, the
Speaker 1: thing that was most obviously is FEMA, Federal Emergency Management
Speaker 1: It see earmarked well over a hundred million dollars to
Speaker 1: New York to provide free treatment everybody, and people just
Speaker 1: didn't want it, as you said, and you know, they
Speaker 1: try advertising into subways and people didn't wanted. But the
Speaker 1: main reason it was is that people were Okay, um,
Speaker 1: you know that initially what happens, and this has happened
Speaker 1: over and over and over it. Recently wrote an article
Speaker 1: for one of the major newspapers, I think it was
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal about this around the adversity of
Speaker 1: nine eleven that the lesson that came out of nine
Speaker 1: eleven was when there's a massive event, people initially are
Speaker 1: pretty upset even across the country, and the first surveys
Speaker 1: were done within a few days of nine eleven, and
Speaker 1: you know, you would almost they asked yourself, well, if
Speaker 1: people weren't upset, what's wrong with them? You know, because
Speaker 1: this was a horrific thing that happened, unprecedented, scary thing.
Speaker 1: And you know, within the first weeks or so, people
Speaker 1: were still very upset. I was in New York, in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was like. We're from you
Speaker 1: where you were, If you were in Brooklyn, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was on a six and fet in Manhattan. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so people in your where you were living. I
Speaker 1: was living further uptown. I was having nightmares, you know
Speaker 1: about aims because the planes fly right over my building
Speaker 1: to in the flight to Laguaritis. We're in the flight path.
Speaker 1: They're up in the sky, but pretty high up, but still,
Speaker 1: you know, we hear them regularly and suddenly they you know,
Speaker 1: I had, you know, a nightmare's the crashing. All of
Speaker 1: those reactions are quite natural when you've been in a
Speaker 1: situation is a life threat, and I think they're adaptive
Speaker 1: mechanisms for our brain to remind us what happened and
Speaker 1: to have us replay it. You know, we have these
Speaker 1: intrusive thoughts and we don't want them. And most people
Speaker 1: have these reactions when they're in a life threatening situation,
Speaker 1: when they've been in a life threatening situation that our
Speaker 1: our minds are trying to work it out. What happened?
Speaker 1: Can I can I can I avoid this in the
Speaker 1: futures or something I can do? Is there something I
Speaker 1: can learn from? This same thing with being highly aroused,
Speaker 1: being highly aroused for a few days, even even longer
Speaker 1: is quite adaptive. It's quite natural, and I think it's
Speaker 1: quite adaptive because it in it keeps us on edge
Speaker 1: and keeps us ready in case something this And we
Speaker 1: didn't know even at nine eleven, we didn't know it
Speaker 1: was was more going to happen because the fighter planes
Speaker 1: in the sky was going to happen again. So being
Speaker 1: on edge is actually really adapted for a period of time.
Speaker 1: And so those reactions were bandied about in the media,
Speaker 1: and you know, by mental health professionals as well, and
Speaker 1: they think not theal health professionals were leading the charge
Speaker 1: which the media picks up on that you know, we're
Speaker 1: headed for a mental health crisis. Of massive proportions. But
Speaker 1: then within a short period of time, I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly when it was, but not too long after, not eleven,
Speaker 1: certainly within six months, but I think much sooner, all
Speaker 1: those symptoms went away, which is quite natural and quite expected.
Speaker 1: We're started doing the same thing with the COVID crisis.
Speaker 1: There's going to be a massive mental health crisis. I've
Speaker 1: read this everywhere right around April, and that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: The data are coming in now and that the massive
Speaker 1: mental health crisis never happened. You know, some people have suffered,
Speaker 1: just like I live in. Some people suffered greatly, but
Speaker 1: most people did not. Most of us, you know, suffered
Speaker 1: chronic extress of some sort. I'm to say moderate levels
Speaker 1: of chronic express. I grind my teeth more than I
Speaker 1: used to. Well, I want to ask you about you know.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're saying this. I was there, and interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: as in my twenties, it was working a temporary job
Speaker 1: as an assistant that I didn't like. My career hadn't
Speaker 1: taken off yet, and and I had an anxiety disorder
Speaker 1: and panic disorder that was just newly diagnosed and working
Speaker 1: on it. So I was someone that was having four
Speaker 1: or five six panic attacks a day. UM. I had
Speaker 1: a fear of flying, a fear of tall buildings. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you would think nine eleven would be the
Speaker 1: worst day of my life, and I always say it
Speaker 1: was one of the best. It sounds weird, but one
Speaker 1: of the best days of my life in terms of
Speaker 1: my anxiety level. So when I got to work that
Speaker 1: day from Brooklyn, the first planet hit. I didn't know
Speaker 1: because I've been on the subway and I was getting
Speaker 1: my coffee at the coffee cart and I was just
Speaker 1: babbling about nothing, and the guy there said, hey, look,
Speaker 1: you know, did you notice that? And I saw the
Speaker 1: tower on fire and he said it was a plane
Speaker 1: and there had been a drunk pilot a few months
Speaker 1: earlier that had crashed into a building like like a
Speaker 1: little cessna. It was something in New Jersey or something.
Speaker 1: And I said, I wonder if it's a drunk pilot. UM.
Speaker 1: I actually did think it was a major airline, um,
Speaker 1: just from the amount of smoke. But I thought maybe
Speaker 1: this pilot went insane or drunk. And I didn't think
Speaker 1: much of it, even though it's like two of my
Speaker 1: worst fears and then I walked into work and I
Speaker 1: somehow missed the second one hitting, and someone told me
Speaker 1: they saw it, and at that moment I knew, I
Speaker 1: think this is some kind of planned attack. But my
Speaker 1: point is I watched the towers fall outside, and it
Speaker 1: did kind of make me feel panicky, so I know
Speaker 1: I ran back and it didn't you know, stay with
Speaker 1: it too long. I mean, but I always think if
Speaker 1: I had seen the plane myself, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think that would have maybe broken me for a little longer.
Speaker 1: But my point is that day, Um, I normally carry
Speaker 1: dissolvable klonopin and an inhaler around because I have asthma,
Speaker 1: but and there was what I forgot to bring them
Speaker 1: that day, and I was trapped in Manhattan, like all
Speaker 1: my worst fears. Trapped in Manhattan can't leave unless you
Speaker 1: walk over a bridge. And I didn't have a panic
Speaker 1: attack at all, And it was weird, and I wonder
Speaker 1: was I in shock? You know that it makes perfect
Speaker 1: sense to me. You know, I hadn't really thought about
Speaker 1: this much until you mentioned it. But the anxiety is
Speaker 1: generally undifferentiated. It's kind of this general foreboding and a
Speaker 1: kind of a fear that something's going to happen. But
Speaker 1: you know what, Yeah, the difference between that and the
Speaker 1: kind of anxiety people feel for when they've when they've
Speaker 1: been exposed in potential trauma is different because it's focused.
Speaker 1: It's focused on the thing that happened. The thing that
Speaker 1: happened is very worrisome and makes people and is, but
Speaker 1: it's a very different kind of an anxiety. It's a
Speaker 1: much more controlled and focused anxiety about this particular thing
Speaker 1: that could happen. It's not pleasant either, but it's it's
Speaker 1: it's more focused. And if it doesn't resolve on its own,
Speaker 1: which sometimes happens, and you get into the realm with PTSD,
Speaker 1: then it starts to become more generalized and more global
Speaker 1: when you think that think could happen anywhere. And that's
Speaker 1: what people with PTSD suffer. They feel like the event,
Speaker 1: the event that they experience, it's more and more wrapped
Speaker 1: up in their memory with other things, and it gets
Speaker 1: triggered really easily by other things. And I don't like
Speaker 1: the word triggered because if that's taken out a kind
Speaker 1: of a just like a political context to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's become somewhat become useless because of the
Speaker 1: of the ubiquity of it now. But but for people
Speaker 1: who generally have PTSD, the thing that that's so frightened them,
Speaker 1: the thing that became the potential trauma for them, is
Speaker 1: now tied up with so many other fast as their life.
Speaker 1: It can be, it can be reminded of it really easily,
Speaker 1: and they have these attacks that seemed like it's an
Speaker 1: event is happening again. But even then it's still focused
Speaker 1: on the thing that happened. And that's the difference. So
Speaker 1: it's different than this general sense of of anxiousness. You know.
Speaker 1: I was on I I don't suffer anxiety, but I
Speaker 1: was on some really heavy duty medications as someone for
Speaker 1: a nerve problem that I developed out of the blue
Speaker 1: in my face. It was very, very painful. So I
Speaker 1: put on these medications and one of the side effects
Speaker 1: of these medications is a kind of an undifferentiated anxiety.
Speaker 1: I read that on the bottom I thought great and
Speaker 1: so um. But that experience was very interesting to me,
Speaker 1: being the nerd scientists that I am, I thought, huh,
Speaker 1: so this is what this feels like like just being anxious,
Speaker 1: you know, without quite knowing why. And I must admit
Speaker 1: I didn't like it at all, you know, but that's
Speaker 1: the difference from it being more focused, you know, on
Speaker 1: the thing that actually happened, the one thing that's it's
Speaker 1: that makes sense. And I also think too, there was
Speaker 1: something in my brain like well, as weird as it sounds,
Speaker 1: once the National Guard was there and they shut the
Speaker 1: city down, we kind of figured out what had happened.
Speaker 1: I really didn't think something more was going to happen,
Speaker 1: and I just thought of all the people, you know,
Speaker 1: Within hours, all of those signs went up. My husband's missing,
Speaker 1: my wife's missing. It was it was like no room
Speaker 1: for anxiety. It was just grief, and it was wow,
Speaker 1: I'm so lucky. I'm not personally affected by this. Uh
Speaker 1: It's not like I made a choice not to be anxious,
Speaker 1: but I feel like anxiety just had no room. It
Speaker 1: just seems like a frivolous emotion. At that point, it
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I almost felt an adrenaline rush
Speaker 1: of maybe relief for gratitude or something. But but but
Speaker 1: then a month later and I thought, oh, this has
Speaker 1: changed my life. I'm not gonna be so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty seven when this happened. So I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I will never obsess over stupid things again. You know,
Speaker 1: dating is not important my my career, Like who cares?
Speaker 1: And I mean, not even a month later, I'm back
Speaker 1: to why does this person have that? And I don't
Speaker 1: have this? And I thought, oh my god, not even
Speaker 1: nine eleven changed me. But but what you're saying is like,
Speaker 1: that's kind of normal. In fact, it's it's the resilience
Speaker 1: of humans, you know. Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah exactly. And
Speaker 1: I think the shared, the shared nature of especially in
Speaker 1: New York was kind of remarkable. And I think in
Speaker 1: a way, you know, there's always silver linings and the worst,
Speaker 1: you know, event, and I think one of the silver
Speaker 1: linings was New Yorkers. New Yorkers suffered a lot initially
Speaker 1: and suffered, as you said, tremendous grief and shared grief,
Speaker 1: a lot of shared grief, just people mourning. Um. But
Speaker 1: it was also because it happened here when it was
Speaker 1: clearly over, we also knew that. So I had this
Speaker 1: vivid memory being on a live right next to Columba
Speaker 1: University where I teach it on the campus. My my
Speaker 1: children were small then, and we used to take them
Speaker 1: on the campuses. The campus is like a country club
Speaker 1: in the middle of Manhattan, you know, so it's manicured.
Speaker 1: So we would take lots of people take their kids there.
Speaker 1: And we'd been hanging out with our kids, and there
Speaker 1: were no airplanes in the sky, and everybody notices because
Speaker 1: we're in the flight path and where were the planes.
Speaker 1: The only thing we saw were military planes. Then about
Speaker 1: a month after not to Live in, a commercial flight
Speaker 1: flew over and I looked up in the sky kind
Speaker 1: of in awe of this, and I looked around and
Speaker 1: everybody I could see was doing the same thing, and
Speaker 1: there was a shared sense of we're getting back to normal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the country were more anxious for
Speaker 1: a much longer time because absolutely I felt that too.
Speaker 1: And it's like, you know, I'm I'm a comedian, and
Speaker 1: so all the jokes that comedians were making were like
Speaker 1: they're not coming for the dairy queens, you know, like
Speaker 1: you're fine out. But it's true. It's like they didn't
Speaker 1: have the experience that we did of how um we
Speaker 1: felt really safe because we had each other in People
Speaker 1: would stop on the street and just hug each other.
Speaker 1: You know. It felt um, it wasn't abstract concept this terrorism,
Speaker 1: it was we lived it and so we got to
Speaker 1: uh like a repair with each other. Yes, absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And you know if people interviewed me every every anniversary
Speaker 1: of not eleven, you often get intoviewed, especially on the
Speaker 1: tenth and the twenty, and people say things to me like, well,
Speaker 1: our New Yorker is now cold and I'm feeling again,
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, not at all. New Yorkers
Speaker 1: do what's needed to be just started putting in a
Speaker 1: plug for New York. No, please do. I'm pro New
Speaker 1: York and New York. New Yorkers do what needs to
Speaker 1: be done. And after an eleven people did what needed
Speaker 1: to be done. And then when when it's past, you
Speaker 1: know people, um, you know, people go back to what
Speaker 1: they're doing. It's not cold, that just they're doing what
Speaker 1: they need to do. We'll be right back. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you because we keep saying the word resilience.
Speaker 1: So now I'm going to be someone listening who's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I have this and that and I'm a
Speaker 1: resilient person. You know. The word I feel like is
Speaker 1: if you're not looking at it in a clinical way,
Speaker 1: people can take it personally like like it's a judgment, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that person has more hutzpah than you. And you're not
Speaker 1: talking about the emotional word resilient. You're talking about literally,
Speaker 1: like almost evolutionary resilience. Right. I'm glad you brought that up.
Speaker 1: Because we started using the word resilience, it wasn't used
Speaker 1: very much. And we debated actually when we first started
Speaker 1: identifying these patterns whether we should call it the word resilience,
Speaker 1: and in fact, some of my colleagues didn't want to,
Speaker 1: and I argued for it, and I won the argument.
Speaker 1: Now to some extent, regret it because the word has
Speaker 1: become the words become very popular, to some extent because
Speaker 1: of the research we've we've done, but for other reasons
Speaker 1: as well. Um, people give me gifts that have the
Speaker 1: word resilience on it. And there are some very old
Speaker 1: things that have the word resilience, UM, like resilient springs.
Speaker 1: I have a little box of springs and it says
Speaker 1: resilient springs is probably from the thirties. But the word
Speaker 1: resilience I use in a very specific way to define.
Speaker 1: I use it as an outcome. Resilience is what we
Speaker 1: say that this is a resilient behavior. You are resilient
Speaker 1: to the outcome. And I don't think and this may be,
Speaker 1: this may be only that way, it's the only way
Speaker 1: I use it, and I think, then this may become
Speaker 1: as a real surprise to your listeners, UM, that there
Speaker 1: are not resilient people. People are not resilient because there's
Speaker 1: really no way to tell. And this is a huge
Speaker 1: part of what motivated me to write this book. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's about trauma, but the other part
Speaker 1: is really about this idea of resilience. And what we
Speaker 1: found is when you know, you see in the in
Speaker 1: the newspapers, on websites, you know, especially you see them
Speaker 1: during COVID, when anything, anything major happens, you see the
Speaker 1: five key traits of resilient people. And that's just simply
Speaker 1: a myth. That's a fallacy because you know, there are
Speaker 1: not five things. Well, we measure the things that correlate
Speaker 1: with this resilient outcome. When something happens, we measure who
Speaker 1: is showing this resilient pattern basically okay in functioning, and
Speaker 1: their most have very few symptoms for years after, you know,
Speaker 1: the years following the event, maybe a little bit at
Speaker 1: the beginning and then afterwards they're doing Okay, we measure
Speaker 1: who you know, that pattern, and then we look at
Speaker 1: what are the things that we measured earlier that correlate
Speaker 1: with this pattern? What are the things people are doing
Speaker 1: later that correlate with this pattern? What are the things
Speaker 1: that we can measure before the event happened if we
Speaker 1: have those kind of data, what are the things We
Speaker 1: did a study in emergency department and we looked at
Speaker 1: we had blood samples, and the blood you get immune functioning,
Speaker 1: stress response, you get genetics, you get all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And the more we look at, the more we find
Speaker 1: we've they're probably been about fifty things that have been
Speaker 1: identified as correlates are resilience. So there are no five
Speaker 1: magic traits or fifty traits, and no one person can
Speaker 1: be all of those things. Resilience is a large category,
Speaker 1: so that means it's heterogeneous or lots of people have
Speaker 1: value lots of different pieces. But here's the crunchure for
Speaker 1: me as a scientist, we can't predict resilience even with
Speaker 1: those fifty things. We've done machine learning studies, you know,
Speaker 1: are we where we do all kinds of sophisticated computational
Speaker 1: modeling and or the same kind of things that these
Speaker 1: all the evil websites you hear about, or the evil
Speaker 1: Facebook you hear about, that's predicting your very moves. We
Speaker 1: can do the same thing too with these variables, and
Speaker 1: we're not predicting your very moves, but we're trying to
Speaker 1: predict resilience. And when we do that, we we only
Speaker 1: get to move the needle to some extent. Even when
Speaker 1: we have fifty or sixty predictors. If you have five,
Speaker 1: you don't move it hardly at all. And that was
Speaker 1: baffling to me for a long time. And this is
Speaker 1: again why I wrote the books, because I realized it's
Speaker 1: not having the key traits. What it is is every
Speaker 1: single event we're confronted with, we have to kind of
Speaker 1: embrace that event and work it out and you and
Speaker 1: and some things work in some situations and some things
Speaker 1: don't work in other situations. So if you have one
Speaker 1: are these magic traits that that that from the list
Speaker 1: of five, it might be helpful in one situation and
Speaker 1: it might not in another. So it's not going to
Speaker 1: overall do you much good. And every situation we have
Speaker 1: to work it out. We have to figure out what
Speaker 1: has happened to me right now and what do I
Speaker 1: need to do? Well. That brings me to the other
Speaker 1: word in your book, So resilience is more of a
Speaker 1: scientific result than a character trait. But you do use
Speaker 1: the word flexibility in your book, So is that more
Speaker 1: of the character trait that people need to embrace when
Speaker 1: they've been through a potentially traumatic event? Flexibility? I don't
Speaker 1: think is it a trait? Well, trade in psychology means
Speaker 1: something you kind of do all the time. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so I think of it as an ability and and
Speaker 1: and and traits are kind of different. You can you
Speaker 1: can develop traits, but they're they're kind of hard to develop,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're more like personality types. But the flexibility,
Speaker 1: the pieces the flexibility, Um, it's a tool, absolutely, it's
Speaker 1: it's a process and there are different abilities that go
Speaker 1: in that process and people can definitely learn these. And
Speaker 1: in the book, I break it down into lots of
Speaker 1: it has moving parts to break it down into certain
Speaker 1: attitude and certain sequence and behaviors people use when they're
Speaker 1: confronted with something. And you know, we can we've studied
Speaker 1: all these parts and we beginning to see how they
Speaker 1: fit together, and that's why their abilities basically and and
Speaker 1: M that's really the main reason I wrote the book
Speaker 1: was because I thought, I've been studying flexibility and I've
Speaker 1: been studying resilience in trauma, and I was puzzled by
Speaker 1: the fact that we couldn't actually predict the same thing
Speaker 1: with PTS. That you can't predict PTSD very well, and
Speaker 1: it's not that easy to predict. So I was puzzled
Speaker 1: by all this, and I was doing the work on
Speaker 1: flexibility and one day I had kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: home or Simpson moment, don't you know, hit my forehead,
Speaker 1: and I realized, it's it's flexibility, stupid. It's like the
Speaker 1: flexibility the process this you've been studying, are the process
Speaker 1: people use to actually work this out. And I began
Speaker 1: to look in this more closely, and in fact that
Speaker 1: it seemed to be the case. Um, so you know,
Speaker 1: I began to work on this and putting it all together.
Speaker 1: And that's what it is. There. I have to write
Speaker 1: the book length treatise on this because it's too large
Speaker 1: to you know, there's too many parts to explain and
Speaker 1: work out. And you know, that's where we are now. Well,
Speaker 1: so I have a few more questions for you. I
Speaker 1: was really interested in the I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know the old George Carlin bit about shell shocked. Do
Speaker 1: you know, No, I don't know what. I love George.
Speaker 1: I love him too. And you know, us comedians can
Speaker 1: theorize about something and it sounds really good, like yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, and and and so his theory always was
Speaker 1: like the truth to me. And then I read your
Speaker 1: book and I was like, oh, not true at all.
Speaker 1: But he talks about how in language we kind of
Speaker 1: make things nice, you know, because we don't know what
Speaker 1: upset anyone. And and he was saying, he's upset that
Speaker 1: we don't use the words like shell shocked, and now
Speaker 1: we say post herm at extress disorder. You know. He
Speaker 1: was saying that that actually is disrespectful to the veterans.
Speaker 1: They are shell shocked, they are hit by shells, they
Speaker 1: were traumatized, they had it hard, and now we just
Speaker 1: you know, we don't even picture bodies being hit by bullets.
Speaker 1: We just say post traumatic stress disorder. And I used
Speaker 1: to think, yeah, that's right. And then listening to your
Speaker 1: I listened to your book, is that you know shell
Speaker 1: shocked calling it post traumatic stress disorder was actually to
Speaker 1: improve the lives of vets because they used to get
Speaker 1: blamed for shell shock, you know, they used to not
Speaker 1: be treated well. And like, what do you mean you
Speaker 1: can't go back out there, And so I just wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you that joke. But also if you could
Speaker 1: take apart from me, why, um, Although it's a funny
Speaker 1: bit and I get the essence of what he's saying.
Speaker 1: Why is George Carlin wrong? I mean, he's right and
Speaker 1: he's wrong. And shell shock was an important step in
Speaker 1: the evolution of coming to terms with trump. Um. It's
Speaker 1: a strange history because for most of our history there's
Speaker 1: no evidence of people acknowledging trauma, which is very strange
Speaker 1: because you find evidence of grief and bereavement way back,
Speaker 1: you know, in the Greeks and you know, in the
Speaker 1: early classics, but you don't find evidence of you know,
Speaker 1: traumatic nightmares and things. So there was a long reckoning
Speaker 1: and shell shock, as you said, was was was respected
Speaker 1: and disrespected. At the same time. In World War One,
Speaker 1: UM and soldiers were there's this this famous phrase shot
Speaker 1: at dawn. Many soldiers who had shell shock were shot
Speaker 1: as traders or as cowards that you shot at dawn
Speaker 1: if they couldn't go back to the front because they
Speaker 1: just couldn't. Um. But the other so, so it has
Speaker 1: a very specific meaning. It has an unsavory meaning in
Speaker 1: some sense, but also um, it's it's completely restricted to war,
Speaker 1: and war PTSD or war trauma is in some ways
Speaker 1: the same mechanism. It's certainly the same mechanism as that
Speaker 1: the other kinds of trauma people experience. So shell shock
Speaker 1: would be a disservice to everybody else if we called
Speaker 1: it at and I mean, you know, I think, well,
Speaker 1: there's a big problem with PTSD in the military, which
Speaker 1: is the veterans find it enormously stigmatizing. Still is it
Speaker 1: because they feel it it marks them for life like that,
Speaker 1: like it's something they can't ever recover from. So they're
Speaker 1: always yeah, well there's a long there's a long onus
Speaker 1: of in the military of suspecting that it's some weakness
Speaker 1: in you, that you've got PTSD, and and so there's that.
Speaker 1: But here's the big thing is it's way over diagnosed. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think, and you know, well it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's so it's not diagnosed in the military much. But
Speaker 1: it's um because if there's a war going out, but
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's over diagnosed in veterans. And I
Speaker 1: did my internship. Actually, what when you're doing do a
Speaker 1: PhD in clinical psychology, it's what's required of everybody is
Speaker 1: a one year internship in a hospital or in a
Speaker 1: clinical setting, not always a hospital. But I did my
Speaker 1: internship in the Veterans Hospital and all the patients I
Speaker 1: had practically had PTSD. But when I began to work
Speaker 1: with them, I realized, Um, this isn't PTSD. This guy
Speaker 1: I'm working with, it's got different kinds of problems. And
Speaker 1: they didn't know what that was then. And that was
Speaker 1: just beginning my career. And I also felt like it's
Speaker 1: not my place and the internship to challenge this. But
Speaker 1: years later, now that I do a lot of research
Speaker 1: and veterans, now I had actually a research center for
Speaker 1: veterans and families, a resilience center for veterans and families,
Speaker 1: and we developed an idea of what we call transition
Speaker 1: stress that very few veterans that we asked them. I'm
Speaker 1: estimating around seven percent of veterans who have seen combat
Speaker 1: duties experienced PTSD. That's much lower than I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry much that that's much lower than the common assumption
Speaker 1: that it's twenty or thirty percent. But we've got I think,
Speaker 1: i'd have to say the best data. We've been involved
Speaker 1: in some magnificent studies and have hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: soldiers before they go to war and then followed afterwards.
Speaker 1: And I've been lucky to be involved in those data sets,
Speaker 1: and we see around seven percent. And when you have
Speaker 1: data in that way, you can really hone in on
Speaker 1: what's actually the different patterns are. So I'm estimated and
Speaker 1: it's been replicated by other investigators around seven percent. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of veterans with psychological problems. So
Speaker 1: what is that? And we decided it was something related
Speaker 1: to transitioning back to civilian life because a lot of
Speaker 1: the soldiers are young when they go into the war,
Speaker 1: they into when they enlist, they're they're not quite adults,
Speaker 1: and they come of the age as adults. They emerge
Speaker 1: as adults. There's a concept in psychology called emerging adulthood.
Speaker 1: They become adults in this context where there's a lot
Speaker 1: of meaning to things. It's highly structured and it there's
Speaker 1: a lot of camaraderie, sense of brothers in combat. Women
Speaker 1: are now in combat too, and that's a really complex
Speaker 1: problem that has been worked out yet. But there's just
Speaker 1: all of these things that when you move to civilian
Speaker 1: life back into the civilian world, now they don't they
Speaker 1: don't quite, they're not there. There isn't that camaradoe anymore.
Speaker 1: There isn't that tremendous sense of meaning and now you're
Speaker 1: coming into the civilian world was basically a few skills
Speaker 1: and a sense that especially now, um people veterans have
Speaker 1: a sense of what they did is not appreciate it
Speaker 1: at all. People are more sympathetic deveterans, but people don't
Speaker 1: know what they've been through and they don't and there's
Speaker 1: they're not they have this shorthand with each other, and
Speaker 1: there's this intensity, you know, like I will die for you,
Speaker 1: you know, um, and you don't really feel that way
Speaker 1: about you know, Larry at the office and hearing resources
Speaker 1: and I must there must be also just some kind
Speaker 1: of heightened excitement whether you're you know, like just in
Speaker 1: an intensity that real life doesn't have in a way.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, I don't even mean intensity like you could
Speaker 1: get shot any minute, but almost like a romantic intensity,
Speaker 1: or I think, I think it can be very there's
Speaker 1: a lot of drudgery and excuse me in military life,
Speaker 1: but there's certainly a sense of in some moments there's
Speaker 1: a there's a kind of a it's an unmistakable pause,
Speaker 1: and people have written about that. Actually there's a there's
Speaker 1: an unmistakable kind of surgery of adrenaline. Even if it's danger,
Speaker 1: there's adrenaline involved. One veteran put it in a book
Speaker 1: by Sebastian Younger, who is a really great journalist. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed his work. He said that there's a quote, um,
Speaker 1: in civilian life, nothing really matters, and all the wrong
Speaker 1: people are in power. And that's what it feels like,
Speaker 1: you know. And so it's like, where was this world
Speaker 1: where where there was this consequence? And there was you know.
Speaker 1: One of the soldiers I worked with talked about being
Speaker 1: I think in Vietnam and when with a comrade and
Speaker 1: they had they had both wet their paths because of
Speaker 1: the fear they were, which is a natural physiological response
Speaker 1: to intense danger, and they were but they shared that
Speaker 1: they shared this evening where they were basically looking at
Speaker 1: the stars and they were somewhere you know, in this
Speaker 1: context that was quite dangerous and there was a sense
Speaker 1: of being so alive. So, you know, so anyway that
Speaker 1: I think that not to make too much about all this,
Speaker 1: but um, it's hard to get back in the civilian world.
Speaker 1: And I think veterans don't want to go to veteran
Speaker 1: hospitals so much. They don't want to be treated for
Speaker 1: PTSD because they often feel like they don't have PTSD,
Speaker 1: but it's the only treatment option they have, you know,
Speaker 1: for psychological problems. Interesting, right, it's like the old school,
Speaker 1: like you're having nightmares, you think you're being attacked, but
Speaker 1: it's so much more than that. And some people don't
Speaker 1: even have that, I guess, right, exactly right, So it's
Speaker 1: I think it's a really important distinction that's emerging. We'll
Speaker 1: continue the interview on the flip side of a quick
Speaker 1: message from our sponsors. Well, my last question for you
Speaker 1: is and when we're you know, I know nothing, but
Speaker 1: I'm like, how can you be right about this? How
Speaker 1: can you be right about the fact that there is
Speaker 1: no more And like when you compare the after nine eleven,
Speaker 1: nobody really needed mental health help, like I get that,
Speaker 1: but the pandemic. I mean, so I'm seeing videos every
Speaker 1: day of people having to be duct taped on airplanes,
Speaker 1: like people freaking out in stores, knocking over mask displays. Now,
Speaker 1: is this a matter of It really isn't any different.
Speaker 1: But we all have video phones now and we see it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's exactly what it is. Because in the
Speaker 1: digital age, you capture that, you capture the extreme case,
Speaker 1: and it gets a lot of play. Um. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a that's that's a difficult thing. And I
Speaker 1: think eventually we'll I'll grow all this, We'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: But I hope you're right. I'm afraid for humanity. But okay,
Speaker 1: I think though that you know, flying has become commonplace again,
Speaker 1: and people fly, um, you know all these other things
Speaker 1: that are conftantly. You know, certainly people I don't want to,
Speaker 1: but I don't I want to. I want to be
Speaker 1: clear that people have suffered during the pandemic, and some
Speaker 1: people have suffered extreme things. Some of the people have
Speaker 1: suffered the most are front front and health providers. They've
Speaker 1: really suffered a lot, a lot. But you know, people
Speaker 1: who have been hospitalized, that's really scary. People who have
Speaker 1: been you know, whose relatives have been hospitalized. Um, and
Speaker 1: my mother was hospitalized she's you know, for COVID. You know,
Speaker 1: that was difficult, but that was more that was actually
Speaker 1: kind of a grief response, that was having at it.
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean that's not most people's experience
Speaker 1: a lot of people, but basically the most common challenge
Speaker 1: people have been confronted with is enduring mild to moderate stress,
Speaker 1: you know, and mild to moderate stress we're not designed
Speaker 1: for that. We're designed for acute stress, you know, like
Speaker 1: these these acute events, and stress is very adaptive. It
Speaker 1: helps us deal with it. But chronic stress not only
Speaker 1: exhausts us, but it actually sends our system into a
Speaker 1: little bit of it disequilibriates us, and it kind of
Speaker 1: throws us off a little bit. We started having physical problems,
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't have had physical problems before. We have
Speaker 1: physical manifestations of stress, and that's very real, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're all a little exhausted, you know, and we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: can we is it done yet? Okay? Is it done yet?
Speaker 1: You know? So all that's exhausting, but that's not a
Speaker 1: mental health crisis. That's not a mental health crisis on
Speaker 1: precedent performance, that's stress and strength. So in other words, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I had read this too that we're built for
Speaker 1: like quick and dirty little traumatic experiences or you know, stress.
Speaker 1: But to have that kind of low grade is it safe?
Speaker 1: We can't go anywhere oh my god, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know whatever for over a year. We're not built
Speaker 1: for that. But that's not a mental health crisis. And
Speaker 1: we've been doing We've been doing the trajectory analyses that
Speaker 1: I've done for all these other life events. And I
Speaker 1: predicted in twenty twenty that we would see the same
Speaker 1: thing in Martin April kind of predicted we see the
Speaker 1: same thing because I just thought we would for sure.
Speaker 1: And that was I think. I remember I talked to
Speaker 1: someone on I think it was the BBC, and they
Speaker 1: thought it was I don't know adorable as the right word,
Speaker 1: but it thought it just kind of funny that I
Speaker 1: would say, we're going to be okay, because at that
Speaker 1: time in New York we had eight hundred deaths a day.
Speaker 1: We had refrigerator truck down the street, you know, and
Speaker 1: the tents in Central Park Hospital tents. But I mean,
Speaker 1: all the research I've done off over the years suggest
Speaker 1: that this will be the same, and in fact, now
Speaker 1: that we have this data over time, we're finding it
Speaker 1: is the same. Actually we're seeing We're seeing, um, you know,
Speaker 1: some chronic anxiety, as we anticipated some depression, but the
Speaker 1: majority of people were basically psychologically resilient even with even
Speaker 1: with some chronic stress. It's interesting. I mean, I had
Speaker 1: a pretty easy going time of the pandemic. So again,
Speaker 1: anyone listening, I'm not saying you did, but I did.
Speaker 1: I don't have kids, Um, I was able to work
Speaker 1: from home. I didn't lose any income much of something.
Speaker 1: But but I hadn't seen my elderly parents in a
Speaker 1: year during their eighties. They live in Boston. I lived
Speaker 1: in l A during the pandemic, so I was there
Speaker 1: for a year by myself, no physical human contact. I
Speaker 1: saw people sometimes, but I just to me sitting outside
Speaker 1: six ft apart with a mask on. I'd rather just
Speaker 1: sit at home and I'll just see you when it's over,
Speaker 1: you know. But I thought when I got the vaccine
Speaker 1: and pre delta and I flew home to see my family,
Speaker 1: we're all vacted. I thought there was gonna be some
Speaker 1: massive emotion like some release or tears or and it
Speaker 1: felt normal, like I've just seen them five minutes ago,
Speaker 1: and to have been sixteen months. And I again, when
Speaker 1: I didn't feel anything except oh, great to see you,
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm a sociopath. Something's wrong with me. Why
Speaker 1: isn't this some big emotional explosion like like those videos
Speaker 1: of soldiers coming home? And uh, it sounds like I
Speaker 1: just had a resilient response, like nothing's I'm not a shutdown. Um.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe I'm so traumatized from the pandemic that
Speaker 1: I don't have emotions any No. In fact, no, I
Speaker 1: mean it's just a normal response. And and most people
Speaker 1: were not traumatized. I don't be really clear about that.
Speaker 1: Trauma not even an appropriate word to use for what
Speaker 1: most people experienced. Um, and this is not just me,
Speaker 1: you mean that The National Center for PTSD, which is
Speaker 1: usually I hope they're not listening right now, usually quite
Speaker 1: conservative about this. They're usually it's an old school trauma people.
Speaker 1: But they came out with the paper and one of
Speaker 1: the medical journals saying the COVID crisis for almost promote
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people is not about PTSD. It's
Speaker 1: not the kind of event that are kind of a
Speaker 1: currency that that usually generates PTSD. And that's very true,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I mean, I study this stuff.
Speaker 1: I consider myself a reasonably healthy person. I've developed some
Speaker 1: weird physical problems and I went to my doctor, like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? And my doctor said, those are
Speaker 1: stress reactions, you know, And I was incredulous at first.
Speaker 1: Wha stress reactions? You know, like I am a professor
Speaker 1: of stress, but in fact, you know, I'm a human
Speaker 1: like everyone else, and you know, the stress is you know,
Speaker 1: I was locked down with my children. They were angry
Speaker 1: that they, you know, couldn't be at school. They were
Speaker 1: both both at college. You know. We couldn't go out much.
Speaker 1: We did what we could do. You know. It was
Speaker 1: a fantastic victory when we managed to get groceries delivered
Speaker 1: to our house. My neighbors said, how did you do that?
Speaker 1: You know, because it wasn't you know, it's so easy
Speaker 1: to pull off, and so you know, my wife pulled
Speaker 1: it up. She's very smart about those things, you know.
Speaker 1: And so that was life for a while, and there
Speaker 1: was some joys in it, you know. Getting on Zoom
Speaker 1: initially was really fun. You know, getting and then it
Speaker 1: just got old. And after that, you know, then we
Speaker 1: started realizing, and this actually fits the flexibility idea beautifully,
Speaker 1: that what worked at the beginning of the pandemic didn't
Speaker 1: work later, and what worked later doesn't work now. You know.
Speaker 1: Initially we wanted to be connected to everyone as much
Speaker 1: as possible, and at some point, you know, we had
Speaker 1: our kids home, we had all in our same a
Speaker 1: little New York apartment, and that was great for a while.
Speaker 1: Then soon you started to think, well, I have to
Speaker 1: find a way to get some space here, you know,
Speaker 1: and I I don't want to be on zoom again,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you have to find other ways
Speaker 1: to make your life work and to satisfy you know,
Speaker 1: whatever your needs are at the time. Well, I think
Speaker 1: to the flexibility that ended up happening was this sort
Speaker 1: of office revolution where it's like, excuse me, wait, why
Speaker 1: are we commuting so much and causing all this pollution?
Speaker 1: And you know, you can work from home three days
Speaker 1: a week. And I think that those are the stories
Speaker 1: I like to hear more than people are freaking out
Speaker 1: on planes. In my opinion, I think, you know, it
Speaker 1: was an event like this, None of us have any
Speaker 1: control over anything at any time. But for some people,
Speaker 1: maybe this was their first experience with really seeing that
Speaker 1: they don't have a lot of tools to cope with
Speaker 1: their anxiety. And like you said, we're not dealing with
Speaker 1: this massive, massive thing like nine eleven, but you're dealing
Speaker 1: with like maybe being alone with your thoughts for the
Speaker 1: first time. We're having some stress that won't go away
Speaker 1: for the first time, and that I think is intolerable
Speaker 1: for lots of people. But as you said, that's not
Speaker 1: a mental health crisis, and it's a challenge. It's a challenge.
Speaker 1: It's a mental challenge. But for all the executives that
Speaker 1: I heart radio listening, um, we're gonna say there is
Speaker 1: an anxiety crisis and we definitely need to renew this
Speaker 1: podcast for season two, So don't dispute that, please absolutely well.
Speaker 1: I thank you for speaking with me today. This your
Speaker 1: book was fascinating and it and it has really helped
Speaker 1: me to stop casually dropping things like I've got trauma,
Speaker 1: I've got PTSD when I don't. That's great, Jennet Jenne,
Speaker 1: It's it's really been wonderful. Top You're a good interviewers.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode of Anxiety Bites
Speaker 1: Before I get into our takeaways for today, if you
Speaker 1: use Apple podcast, I would love a five star review.
Speaker 1: Here's what it does. There's something something with the algorithm.
Speaker 1: The more people that leave five star reviews, the higher
Speaker 1: up the charts this podcast goes. The higher up the
Speaker 1: charts it goes, the more people find it, the more
Speaker 1: people can get some tips about how to handle their anxiety,
Speaker 1: and the less people we will have on airplanes who
Speaker 1: need to be duct taped to their seats. Isn't that
Speaker 1: a win win? So if you could do that for me,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is free help every week. Just do
Speaker 1: me a favorite. This is all I want for Christmas
Speaker 1: is a five star review and then jose to go
Speaker 1: into some long five page review. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: write three things, this really helped me love this pod.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. I mean, don't write blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: You could even though as long as those five stars
Speaker 1: are there, I would so appreciate it. And you can
Speaker 1: as always go to Jen Kirkman dot com. That is
Speaker 1: my website and click on Anxiety Bites podcast and you
Speaker 1: can see all of the takeaways from every episode. I've
Speaker 1: written them out in list form. You may follow me
Speaker 1: on social media at Jen Kirkman and that is on
Speaker 1: Twitter and on Instagram and on TikTok. I post little
Speaker 1: audio grams from every episode on my social media. There
Speaker 1: is other things on there. I use it as sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, the catch all accounts for all the different
Speaker 1: jobs that I do. But you will find anxiety bites
Speaker 1: stuff on there, and please tell a friend about the show.
Speaker 1: I would love to keep going into a season two
Speaker 1: with this. As of now, we do have forty six
Speaker 1: episodes in season one coming to you, so that meets
Speaker 1: do some quick math. This is episode ten. We've got
Speaker 1: thirty six more coming your way throughout this year, and
Speaker 1: I have a lot of great guests that are lined up,
Speaker 1: a lot of great guests that have already been recorded,
Speaker 1: and a lot of great guests that I am yet
Speaker 1: to interview. So any who, let's go into the takeaways
Speaker 1: from this episode. The most common challenge that we are
Speaker 1: facing post pandemic is mild to moderate stress. But technically
Speaker 1: we're not in a mental health crisis. We are not
Speaker 1: designed for moderate stress. We are designed for acute stress.
Speaker 1: We can adapt to acute stress. Chronic stress. We can't.
Speaker 1: It exhausts us and condet equilibriate us and causes physical problems.
Speaker 1: Anxiety is a general foreboding feeling, but people who have
Speaker 1: been exposed to potential trauma have a focus on the
Speaker 1: thing that happened. When that doesn't resolve on its own,
Speaker 1: that gets into the realm of having PTSD. PTSD starts
Speaker 1: with being exposed to a potential traumatic event and turns
Speaker 1: into anxiety that the said traumatic event could happen anywhere,
Speaker 1: and then it gets more wrapped up in our memory
Speaker 1: and it can be triggered easily by other things. PTSD
Speaker 1: is a complicated diagnosis, but one thing is that there
Speaker 1: needs to have been a traumatic event. A potentially traumatic
Speaker 1: event is a certain class of event that's going to
Speaker 1: activate the alarm system in the brain and body, putting
Speaker 1: the feeling of great danger or physical harm. Those kind
Speaker 1: of event activate a bodily system, which is a more
Speaker 1: extreme version of our regular stress system. When the body
Speaker 1: reacts to experiencing a potentially traumatic event, it doesn't go
Speaker 1: away in some ways. It can take a minimum of
Speaker 1: a few hours and involves cortisol and other neural hormones
Speaker 1: that are long lasting and overall, I would say the
Speaker 1: takeaway that Dr Branana wants us to know or Professor Bernano,
Speaker 1: is that humans are quite resilient. Is sort of the
Speaker 1: way we're built and with the proper tools, we can
Speaker 1: handle most things. Now we don't want to think of
Speaker 1: resilience is something that it's just automatically there. And so
Speaker 1: you know, if you're not bouncing back from something, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with you? Have you not um? You know, evolved?
Speaker 1: There's always tools that we can use to help us
Speaker 1: through things that feel really traumatizing. And hopefully this podcast
Speaker 1: has helped you find your people that can lead you
Speaker 1: down the road to finding more and more tool Thank
Speaker 1: you again for listening, and again, Anxiety Bites, but You're
Speaker 1: in control. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.